“Internet radio so simple that even an old, stupid idiot can use it”

The title of this post is a tongue-in-cheek quote from a post about a new internet radio, called Ira, that seems to be designed with older users in mind. The primary design feature seems to be its simplicity.

In fact, so simple is the Ira that it apparently needs no instructions. The site is empty of any kind of technical information. We guess that the kind of moron who would buy it is the kind of moron who probably couldn’t work out how to get to a website and read it anyway.

The simplicity, however, seems to be deceiving as the following graphic shows:

This situation reminds me of the Ergonomics in Design article from a few years back looking at blood glucose meters (BGM) for diabetics. In their paper titled, “Analysis of a ‘simple’ medical device”, Rogers et al. discovered that a BGM that was marketed “as easy as 1, 2, 3” actually took 52 steps, not 3.